Biology 111 - Biological Principles: Class Assignment

Topic & Searching

FINDING SCHOLARLY JOURNAL ARTICLES

Using Lab 2: enzyme activity as an example, search for primary scientific literature in preparation for writing a lab report. Part of searching for primary literature is thinking of relevant keywords and terms for your topic.

1. What search terms might you consider in your search? Using these terms perform a search for articles in Web of Science.

2. Looking at your results, are these articles primary/original research articles? How can you tell?

3. What are review articles? How do you include or exclude review articles from your search? Limit your results to primary research articles.

4. Which of these articles has been cited the most? Why might this be important? What are some of the journals that publish the majority of these articles?

5. While looking at the detailed record for the most cited article, you decide that you would like to find more articles like it. What are three ways you might go about this?

6. Once you find an article that you would like to read, how would you go about tracking it down?